five hundred days of summer.

Question: How do I know I love a film?

Answer: When I come out of the cinema thinking any (or all) of the following.

a. wishing that I'd written the screenplay myself or at the very least, someone I know had written it so I can call them up and congratulate them.

b. a song from a scene half-way through the film is playing over in my head and I've had to write a snatched lyric on the back of my hand

c. my stomach muscles feel warm from all the laughing.

d. the air conditioning hits the tracks my tears have made and makes me shiver.

e. when I arrive home I look to see when the region 1 release date is because I can't wait for it to be released in europe.

So, yeah. All of that happened.

500 Days of Summer is one of those films that lives up the slow-burn of hype and even when you walk into the theater with all your expectations clasped tightly in your hands, within five minutes it's safe to let those expectations work their way up from your palms. This film is incredible. Every syllable in-cre-di-ble. The soundtrack covers the film like a second skin, the non-linear storyline plots the emotional rollercoaster perfectly and just, umm, GUSH. I wanted to take the film home and kiss it.

I'm guilty of playing threads of Summer out in my own life and just as guilty of designing my own heartache as Tom. The Reality vs. Expectation scene is a magical as everyone says it is. When Hall & Oates break through the emotional soundscape I defy your mouth not to smile. All the details that get lost in the everyday are illuminated in this film - illuminated and held up as reasons, coincidences but more importantly, as life. This is one of the truest films about love I have ever seen and the way that the definition of it is different for everybody.

I can't recommend it enough. Go see it, clasp your hands and fall in lots of love.

You Make My Dreams - Hall & Oates